Page 31 of A Serpent in the Garden

“Your friend is around the back with the birds.” She tilted my head toward the side of her cottage, a wisp of my hair caught up in a breath of breeze.

“Then I should stay here. Animals don’t appreciate when I get too close.”

The light glinted upon my eyes, leaching them of all pigment so only a glimmer of silver remained. “Demons don’t bother mine.”

We found Serich around the corner, scattering greens and berries for the chickens pecking at his feet. A henhouse of old black wood stood behind him. He ducked beneath the laundry line when he heard our approach, his relief palpable in the gentle way he clasped my ancient shoulders.

“Are you okay?” His voice was low, his eyes round with concern. The chickens swarmed and clucked behind him, a flurry of dirty white feathers and sharp talons. He had to hunch to meet my gaze. “You slept so long I thought you’d died.”

“I’m fine, apart from the aches and pains. I couldn’t sleep until nearly dawn.” I plucked at the baggy shift dress the hag’s small frame was drowning in. “I understand her wish for youth the more time I spend in this body.”

Blathilde arced up on my tiptoes, lifting laundry from the line, the hem of her dress ruffling around my thighs. Serich’s eyes lingered on her for a moment before he turned back to me.

“Of all the things we’ve seen since we entered the wood,” he said fervently, “this might be the strangest. I hardly know where to look when I speak to her. She made me eggs this morning and sat across from me while I ate, smearing some sort of ointment all over you.”

I felt my wizened lips pull back into a shriveled smile. “How horrifying.”

“It’s rather more than I’m used to seeing at a breakfast table. She asked me to help her rub it into your back when I finished eating.”

“She told me she planned on returning me in a better condition than she found me. It was probably some tincture to heal dry skin. Though I’m sorry you suffered such a dreadful morning.”

Oh, yes, fucking frightful, It said snidely. However is he still standing?

“It was far from dreadful.” He averted his eyes, stepping back to let a chicken spear a bit of kale in its unusually sharp beak. The bird glared up at me with a beady black eye when it swallowed, as though it didn’t appreciate my demonic existence. “I’m just not used to seeing such a…lack of modesty.”

“None of the girls in Monde’s End have ever needed your assistance with something like that?” I said, the teasing sounding strange on the hag’s rough tongue.

“A few,” he said shortly. “Though maybe not quite so forwardly. I have the suspicion they see me more as a challenge than anything. Which of them will make me cast off the desire for a collar once and for all? As if it’s a game to be won.”

“I wouldn’t like that either,” I had to admit. “But Monde’s End is a dreary place. Making eyes at you might be the only way they can pass the time.”

“And is that how you would spend your time?” He lifted an eyebrow. “Trying to tempt an acolyte out of his robes?”

I shrugged, trying to picture that. Failing. I couldn’t imagine a life without It. “I don’t know who I would have become if not for It. Maybe I would have been right there with them, giggling outside the church.” There were such few pleasures in Monde’s End. Let them giggle while they could.

I would watch them sometimes, all those girls, with a twinge of envy, because they were destined for something I would never have. What use would it be to mingle with the sons of Monde’s End? I would never marry; that I had decided once It moved in. I would never have children. I would never know a man in that way, not least because I would likely die before making it through this nightmare, and because sex outside of wedlock was a sin that might very well damn my soul, on the off-chance I wasn’t already destined for Hell. Would I doom myself for five minutes of dubious pleasure? I would prefer the gray fogs of the In Between. At least I’d be used to it, having lived in Monde’s End for so long.

Oh please, It snorted. There are better things for the demons of Hell to punish. You would be laughed out of the judgement chamber if that’s all your confession amounted to. Though I’d hope you’d hold out for something longer than five minutes.

And be branded some immoral temptress once word got around? A woman could be crammed with all manner of virtue, but there only seemed to be one men cared about. She wouldn’t be worth much once it was gone.

Good Lord. It laughed in such genuine amusement that it caught me off-guard. A temptress. As if men ever need any tempting. That’s stupid. You could wear a head-to-toe burlap sack and men would still wonder what was beneath it. Why do you think brothels exist? A woman doesn’t find a job there because she’s a temptress. She’s there because she has to eat. Why do the men go there? It’s not food they’re hungry for. Brothels wouldn’t exist if men were as pious as they claim. And yet they never cast themselves as whores in that fucking Book. They don’t take the blame for their own desires, they just condemn women for it.

Sex and wantonness are different, and the first won’t send you to Hell. It’s just in the best interest of your future husband to make you think it will. Convince women the world over that it’s some sinful, rotten thing only their holy husband is allowed to do to them and of course they’ll wait until they’re married. It ensures a faithful wife and the paternity of their offspring.

“You have never struck me as a giggler,” Serich was saying. “The only times I’d seen you smile in years were when you were with Livvy or the children.”

That I’d struck him at all was news to me.

“I’d see you pass out Lord Fletcher’s leftovers to the children in the square those days when the fogs were lightest.” He shot a glance over at Blathilde as she piled dry clothes upon my shoulder. “You had a smile for every one of them.”

“I’m surprised you ever paid me any mind at all.”

“When one is surrounded by gigglers,” Serich said dryly, his eyes back on me, “one notices those who don’t.”

I didn’t tell him what I wanted to, which was that one of those gigglers must one day win his affection. His bloodrose already confirmed it. All those buds and thorns, multiplying ceaselessly into the future. I would be very much surprised if he hadn’t already met her.

“Lovelace.” Blathilde picked a delicate, chalky sprig of herb from a bush near the edge of her property and held it out for my inspection as we knelt in her garden. I took it in her gnarled fingers, held it before her eyes. Tiny scarlet flowers, a filigree of jagged leaves marching along the velvety white stem. “Inflames arousal.”